A pixel-art idle game about running an app studio. Ship updates, put out fires and survive App Review. Recruit 68 suspiciously familiar advisers, then sell your studio and do it all again. New in 2.0: App Review rejections, eight incidents, a Hall of Fame and a Game Center fortune leaderboard. Free on iPhone.
I work with app developers all day, and I wanted a game about what that job actually feels like. So Ship It is an idle tycoon where you start with one developer in a tiny office, ship updates, and slowly build a studio. Along the way, things go wrong the way they do in real life: servers go down on a Friday, an SDK gets sunset, and App Review rejects your build when the tech debt gets out of hand
Version 2.0 just went live. It adds an App Review mechanic, incidents, a Hall of Fame that carries across studio sales, and a Game Center leaderboard for your lifetime fortune
There are also 68 collectible advisers. Some of them might look a little familiar if you spend time on tech Twitter :)
If you've ever shipped an app, I'd love to hear which part of the job should become the next incident. Let me know :)
Rik
About Ship It: Idle Dev Tycoon on Product Hunt
“The idle game where App Review can reject you”
Ship It: Idle Dev Tycoon launched on Product Hunt on September 30th, 2026 and earned 94 upvotes and 6 comments, placing #24 on the daily leaderboard. A pixel-art idle game about running an app studio. Ship updates, put out fires and survive App Review. Recruit 68 suspiciously familiar advisers, then sell your studio and do it all again. New in 2.0: App Review rejections, eight incidents, a Hall of Fame and a Game Center fortune leaderboard. Free on iPhone.
On the analytics side, Ship It: Idle Dev Tycoon competes within iOS, Indie Games and Games — topics that collectively have 217k followers on Product Hunt. The dashboard above tracks how Ship It: Idle Dev Tycoon performed against the three products that launched closest to it on the same day.
Who hunted Ship It: Idle Dev Tycoon?
Ship It: Idle Dev Tycoon was hunted by Hendrik Haandrikman. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
For a complete overview of Ship It: Idle Dev Tycoon including community comment highlights and product details, visit the product overview.
Hendrik Haandrikman
Hey Product Hunt!
I work with app developers all day, and I wanted a game about what that job actually feels like. So Ship It is an idle tycoon where you start with one developer in a tiny office, ship updates, and slowly build a studio. Along the way, things go wrong the way they do in real life: servers go down on a Friday, an SDK gets sunset, and App Review rejects your build when the tech debt gets out of hand
Version 2.0 just went live. It adds an App Review mechanic, incidents, a Hall of Fame that carries across studio sales, and a Game Center leaderboard for your lifetime fortune
There are also 68 collectible advisers. Some of them might look a little familiar if you spend time on tech Twitter :)
It's free on iPhone, and you can play the whole game without paying. Payments run on RevenueCat, which is where I work. I built it with a lot of help from @Claude by Anthropic, @ChatGPT by OpenAI , @RevenueCat , @Supabase and Pixellab, as well as playtesting by @thomas_petit1 , @drbarnard , @hannahparvaz , and many more
If you've ever shipped an app, I'd love to hear which part of the job should become the next incident. Let me know :)
Rik